Eye-witness Account of Deportation of Hungarian Jews Given by Arrival from Budapest

A first-hand account of the persecution and deportation of Hungarian Jews is given today by a Hungarian woman who left Budapest a few days ago, in an interview appearing in the Basler Arbeiter Zeitung.

She reports that thousands of Jews from the Budapest suburbs of Ujpest and Kispest, where ghettos have been established, were recently loaded into scaled cattle trains and sent to Poland. Many persons witnessed the deportations, which were accompanied by scenes of horror and terror since the Jews knew the fate in store for them.

Jews from the city of Gycer, she said, were sent to Lublin, which has just been liberated by the Red Army. Some postcards arrived from Jews deported to other parts of Poland, but they were postmarked with the names of towns whose locations were not known, since the Nazis have changed the Polish names to German ones.

Jews are not permitted to accompany their dead to the cemetery, she disclosed. Jewish corpses are taken to the graveyards and buried by Jewish labor gangs without any relatives present. Jews in internment camps are not allowed to seek cover during air raids, and no shelters are provided for them.

The woman, who was enabled to reach Switzerland because she is married to a Swiss national, said that the fate of Hungarian Jews is in the hands of a Nazi-dominated Hungarian triumvirate consisting of Minister of Interior Andor Jaross and two officials under him – Laszlo Baky, Secretary of State in the ministry, and Under-Secretary Laszlo Endre.